API

chalk.<style>[.<style>...](string, [string...])

Example: chalk.red.bold.underline('Hello', 'world');

Chain styles and call the last one as a method with a string argument. Order doesn't matter, and later styles take precedent in case of a conflict. This simply means that chalk.red.yellow.green is equivalent to chalk.green.

Multiple arguments will be separated by space.

chalk.enabled

Color support is automatically detected, as is the level (see chalk.level). However, if you'd like to simply enable/disable Chalk, you can do so via the .enabled property.

Chalk is enabled by default unless explicitly disabled via the constructor or chalk.level is 0.

If you need to change this in a reusable module, create a new instance:

constctx=newchalk.constructor({enabled:false});

chalk.level

Color support is automatically detected, but you can override it by setting the level property. You should however only do this in your own code as it applies globally to all Chalk consumers.

If you need to change this in a reusable module, create a new instance:

constctx=newchalk.constructor({level:0});

Levels are as follows:

All colors disabled

Basic color support (16 colors)

256 color support

Truecolor support (16 million colors)

chalk.supportsColor

Detect whether the terminal supports color. Used internally and handled for you, but exposed for convenience.

Can be overridden by the user with the flags --color and --no-color. For situations where using --color is not possible, add the environment variable FORCE_COLOR=1 to forcefully enable color or FORCE_COLOR=0 to forcefully disable. The use of FORCE_COLOR overrides all other color support checks.

Explicit 256/Truecolor mode can be enabled using the --color=256 and --color=16m flags, respectively.

Styles

Modifiers

reset

bold

dim

italic(Not widely supported)

underline

inverse

hidden

strikethrough(Not widely supported)

visible (Text is emitted only if enabled)

Colors

black

red

green

yellow

blue(On Windows the bright version is used since normal blue is illegible)

magenta

cyan

white

gray ("bright black")

redBright

greenBright

yellowBright

blueBright

magentaBright

cyanBright

whiteBright

Background colors

bgBlack

bgRed

bgGreen

bgYellow

bgBlue

bgMagenta

bgCyan

bgWhite

bgBlackBright

bgRedBright

bgGreenBright

bgYellowBright

bgBlueBright

bgMagentaBright

bgCyanBright

bgWhiteBright

Tagged template literal

constchalk=require('chalk');
constmiles=18;
constcalculateFeet=miles=> miles *5280;
console.log(chalk` There are {bold 5280 feet} in a mile. In {bold ${miles} miles}, there are {green.bold ${calculateFeet(miles)} feet}.`);

Blocks are delimited by an opening curly brace ({), a style, some content, and a closing curly brace (}).

Template styles are chained exactly like normal Chalk styles. The following two statements are equivalent:

256 and Truecolor color support

Colors are downsampled from 16 million RGB values to an ANSI color format that is supported by the terminal emulator (or by specifying {level: n} as a Chalk option). For example, Chalk configured to run at level 1 (basic color support) will downsample an RGB value of #FF0000 (red) to 31 (ANSI escape for red).

Examples:

chalk.hex('#DEADED').underline('Hello, world!')

chalk.keyword('orange')('Some orange text')

chalk.rgb(15, 100, 204).inverse('Hello!')

Background versions of these models are prefixed with bg and the first level of the module capitalized (e.g. keyword for foreground colors and bgKeyword for background colors).

Windows

If you're on Windows, do yourself a favor and use cmder instead of cmd.exe.

Origin story

colors.js used to be the most popular string styling module, but it has serious deficiencies like extending String.prototype which causes all kinds of problems and the package is unmaintained. Although there are other packages, they either do too much or not enough. Chalk is a clean and focused alternative.